Unite announce new BA cabin crew ballot
10.01.10
The Unite union has announced that it will open a second strike ballot of BA cabin crew on January 22. The vote over staffing cuts is expected to take around a month to complete, with the earliest date for a walkout thought to be from 1 March. In a letter to its 12,700 BA cabin crew members, the union's aviation officers, Steve Turner and Brian Boyd, said they were ‘determined’ to hold a new ballot after a strong vote in favour of industrial action was ruled unlawful by the High Court last month, despite talks with the airline via the TUC that commenced last week.
In the letter the Unite officials said: ‘Our ballot will now open on January 22 following the statutory one week's notice to British Airways.' They add that the process had been delayed while the union combed its membership database in a bid to avoid repeating the errors that allowed BA to block the previous strike in the courts. Mrs Justice Cox ruled the poll unlawful because around 900 cabin crew voted despite having applied for voluntary redundancy, which meant they would not be working for the airline at the time of any industrial action. As a result BA was able to overturn a strike vote that had secured a 92% majority on an 80% turnout.
The ballot is seen as an aggressive move given that talks between BA executives and Unite officials, held under the auspices of the TUC, the UK trade union body and chaired by general secretary Brendan Barber commenced last week. Press reports suggest that BA's chief executive, Willie Walsh, has already offered concessions over changes that were imposed in November.
BA's negotiating team opened the TUC talks last week with a presentation emphasising that BA cabin crew have a higher average wage than staff at easyJet and Virgin Atlantic. A BA spokesman said: ‘Unite's general secretaries [Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson] have said they are approaching the talks in a constructive spirit and are seeking a settlement.’
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